Growing breadcrumbs

STUFFED

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Grow Your Own Stuffing

Thanksgiving is a time of year when one’s thoughts naturally turn to . . . stuffing. No, not stuffing yourself, but stuffing a turkey. Even many people who choose not to eat turkey on Thanksgiving nonetheless do enjoy stuffing themselves with stuffing.

So why not think about what ingredients for stuffing can be reaped from the garden? Even better, how about setting aside a little portion of the garden next year as a stuffing garden?

The bread and butter of any stuffing is some starchy food, often bread and butter itself, the bread usually as crumbs. There’s no breadcrumb plant, so forget about growing breadcrumbs. Not that you couldn’t buy some wheat “berries” at a health food store, plant them next spring, harvest the grain when the plants dry down, thresh and winnow out the berries, grind them into flour, make the flour into bread, then let the bread go stale and pound it into bread crumbs.

Growing breadcrumbs

Growing breadcrumbs– I did it once!

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Cover crops and brussels sprouts

NO NEED FOR A MELANCHOLY EXIT

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The Valuable Dead Stuff

Dead leaves on the ground, dead stems on trees and shrubs, dead plants where flowers and vegetables once strutted their stuff — how forlorn the yard can look this time of year. The urge is to tidy things up by blowing or raking leaves out of sight, pruning away unwanted branches, and ripping dead plants out of the ground.

Cover crops and brussels sprouts

Cover crops and brussels sprouts

Garden cleanup has its virtues, but can do more harm than good if taken to excess. For instance, many gardeners like to clear Read more

Sculpture of human reclining under tree and half underground

WHY NOT PLANT

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I Don’t Go With My Gut

No doubt about it: Fall planting of trees and shrubs goes against my grain. Fall is when I feel like closing down the garden, gathering the harvest, and snuggling plants in for the cold months ahead. Spring is when the urge to plant becomes irresistible, when I want to contribute to the symphony of colors and scents of that season.

Sculpture of human reclining under tree and half underground

More mulch needed

In fact, though, fall is in many ways the better time for planting from the point of view of a tree or a shrub. Many nurseries dig bare root plants in the fall Read more

Tulipa kaufmanniana, Waterlily tulip

(MOST) TULIPS ARE (NOT) FOREVER

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Improve Upon their Native Habitat

Tulips are perennial, but usually not strongly so. Disappointment comes from a spring show that over the years declines to fewer blooms, even to nothing more than tufts of leaves, or less. Only good growing conditions and careful choice of varieties can make these spring bulbs truly perennial bloomers.

Oddly enough, those good growing conditions exist in the Netherlands. There, well-drained, sandy soils and a maritime climate’s cool weather keeps leaves green longer into the season to fuel the bulbs for the following years bloom and early growth. Good fertility, water, as needed, and mild winters also help.

Tulips fields in Bollenstreek area of the Netherlands

Tulips fields in Bollenstreek area of the Netherlands

Why “Oddly enough?” Because tulips are native to the rugged growing conditions of Read more

Daisy field and Bartram's house

AMERICA’S FIRST BOTANIST

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Come on Over

Come on over to John’s garden, one of the best around. John Bartram’s, that is. In case you don’t know him — rather, of him — he was America’s first botanist. Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century devised our whole system for classifying plants, called Bartram “the greatest natural botanist in the world.”

John’s garden is a convenient stop during any visit to Philadelphia. You’re going to visit the Liberty Bell, aren’t you? The Bartram garden is only minutes away, just south of Center City.Daisy field and Bartram's house

When John bought this tract along the Schuylkill River in 1728, it was rural land skirting the colonial city. His botanizing took him throughout what is now eastern U.S., and his garden was where Read more

Drying seeds of ramps

MY SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

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Reasons to Save

I’m saving seeds of some of this year’s juiciest tomatoes and most colorful flowers to plant in next year’s garden. Why? Saving my own seed from year to year gives me a bit of independence from seed companies, which, for one reason or another, may stop offering certain varieties.

Picnic Orange pepper from saved seed

Picnic Orange pepper from saved seed

It’s also a way way to maintain an annual supply of seeds that seed companies never offer, so-called heirloom varieties that have been handed down for generations from parents to children and from neighbor to neighbor. Read more

Soil particle size & aggregation

THE TRUTH ABOUT RAIN

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Plenty of Water Here. Really?

During an entire year, a meager three-hundredths of an inch of rain falls on Arica, Chile, yet halfway across the Pacific in the Hawaiian Archipelago, Mount Waialeale receives a sopping 460 inches. The climate on my farmden, and throughout northeastern U.S., is more or less congenial for growing plants — at least those plants we enjoy in our gardens.Arica and Mount Waialeale

We average about four inches of rainfall each month throughout the year, and this amount complements nicely the inch depth of water per week recommended for most garden plants. Read more

Effect of pinching fig shoot

TWO FREE PRUNING TOOLS!

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Tool Number One

Right now, I have before me a most useful pruning tool, two different kinds of pruning tools, in fact. And they are always with me, even when I sleep. Let’s start with the first: my hands.

I use my hands to rip unwanted stems from plants. This seemingly brutal method of pruning can sometimes do a better job and leave the plant healthier than can a precision cut with pruning shears, even fancy pruning shears. Hand pruning is the best way to get rid of suckers, those overly exuberant, usually vertical stems.Removing waterspouts

On apple trees, watersprouts poking up along branches are not fruitful, at least not for a few years. Read more

Lemon Gem marigolds in garden

CURE ALL OR SNAKE OIL?

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Many Uses for Marigold

Gardeners who visit here frequently comment, upon seeing marigold plants growing in and at the foot of my vegetable beds, that I must have planted them for pest control. After all, marigolds are supposed to be one of the workhorses of biological pest control. Plant them and plant pests will be killed or — if they are lucky — merely repelled.Lemon Gem marigolds in garden

It’s an appealing concept: sunny plants that thwart pestilence and blight even as they brighten the garden with their blossoms. Marigolds greatest claim to pest control fame is their effect on nematodes, an effect documented in numerous scientific studies. Read more

Painting of "Man with a Hoe" Millet (1860)

HOE, HOE, HOE

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“Cultivate”??

If I told you that I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my tomatoes, you’d perhaps think I was going out to pull off suckers and tie stems to their stakes. If I told you I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my garden, you’d perhaps imagine that I was going to attend to my tomatoes, perhaps also thin out excess corn plants, prune back my early blooming clematis, and . . . you get the picture. I’m going to take care of miscellaneous things in my garden.tomato pruning & tying

I wouldn’t say I’m stepping outside to “cultivate” my meadow because a meadow doesn’t involve the intimate care needed by a vegetable, a flower garden, or fruit trees or shrubs.

But “cultivate,” when it comes to gardening, is rife with meanings. Read more